Those of you who have ADSL broadband at home will probably have noticed that download bandwidth drops to almost nothing when you upload at full speed. Before last week, I was on a 6Mbps down / 768Kbps up connection (megabits) via Speakeasy. I could easily download at 600 KB/s (kilobytes) and upload at 80 KB/s, but if I uploaded at 80 KB/s, download speeds would slow to a crawl.

Luckily, I am a die-hard user of Throttled Pro. Throttled Pro implements ACK packet priority and also allows you to set upload limits globally or for specific ports. While ACK packet priority does increase download speeds when uploading at full speed, I found that if I reduced my upload speed just a little bit, download speeds would increase dramatically. On my 6Mbps / 768Kbps connection, throttling outbound uploads to 70 KB/s (versus a max of 80 KB/s) allowed me to simultaneously download at nearly full speed.

On my new Sonic.net 30Mbps down / 2Mbps up connection, I can download at 3 MB/s and upload at 220 KB/s. But when I upload at 220 KB/s, I find that download speeds are reduced to less than 200 KB/s -- with ACK packet priority turned on. I throttled outbound traffic to 180 KB/s, and download speeds instantly increased to over 2 MB/s.

If you're a frequent uploader, Throttled Pro is an absolute necessity. Buy it now.